Disabled Black woman targeted by racist white man on airplane speaks out as authorities investigate incident
An elderly Black woman who was subjected to a nasty verbal tirade and shouted at by an angry white racist who called her an ‘ugly black bastard’ on a Ryanair flight from Barcelona to London, says she is “shocked” and has been “depressed” by the treatment.
—‘Ugly Black bastard’: Airline under fire for failing to remove racist passenger—
Delsie Gayle is the 77-year-old, disabled widow at the center of a viral video that circulated widely and has people outraged after the man was allowed to tear into Gayle with racist taunts as the crew co-signed his nastiness and accommodated him by moving Gayle’s seat instead of ejecting him off the airplane.
Gayle told ITV News: “I feel very low. He paid a fare to go on holiday, I’ve paid mine, so why does he abuse me for that due to the color of my skin?” Gayle said the incident has hurt her deeply and she has been unable to eat and sleep.
“I was shocked, nobody ever said those words to me. I travel a lot, I go to Canada…and no-one has every said those words to me.”
“He do it with me and he gets away, he’ll do it to somebody else,” she added.
Gayle was flying home Friday with her daughter who was seated in a different row, when the man beside her started calling her names and broke into a racist outburst that was caught on video by another passenger.
Even when people defended the woman and said she was disabled, he replied:
“I don’t care whether she’s f****** disabled or not – if I tell her to get out she gets out.”
The man the called Gayle an “ugly black b******”, and shouted “don’t talk to me in a foreign language you stupid ugly cow.”
Crew members removed the woman, but many on social media called for a boycott of the budget airline, citing hypocrisy saying if the tables were turned an irate Black passenger who have been hauled off the airplane. Instead, the elderly woman was moved to a different seat and the man remained seated.
“On the plane it was unprofessional, and after it was unprofessional,” she said about Ryanair. “It’s all wrong, I just believe they need more training,” he daughter said.
The trip to Costa Brava was a gift to Gayle since she was feeling down about losing her husband.
“I’m depressed and I lost my husband, I’m so depressed I lost him.”
“I’m just sitting in the house, crying and I don’t go out. And she (the daughter) gave me three days holidays and so I said ‘ok I’ll come along.'”
Her eldest daughter said: “Nothing was done and I know if that was a black person racially abusing an elderly woman the police would have been called. When I saw the video I felt he was the victim – that’s the way RyanAir was treating it.”
“It’s so upsetting to believe that this is still going on,” she added.
Gayle added: “I feel really depressed about it. I go to my bed and say ‘what have I done?’ I haven’t done anything for you to attack me. Because of the colour of my skin I was abused like that?”
Ryanair said the incident is under investigation by Essex Police.
A spokeswoman for Essex police said on Sunday: “Essex Police takes prejudice-based crime seriously and we want all incidents to be reported.
“We are working closely with Ryanair and the Spanish authorities on the investigation.”
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